


The Prize

by oooknuk



Series: Getting to Know You [2]
Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: M/M, Reference to deaths of major characters, reference to deaths of minor characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-29
Updated: 2017-04-29
Packaged: 2018-10-25 05:54:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10758090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oooknuk/pseuds/oooknuk
Summary: Fifty years after 'Getting to know you', the Gathering has come, and the losses are too much to bear. Methos comes home after a long absence.





	The Prize

**Author's Note:**

> WARNINGS: Deaths of beloved characters (but not Duncan or Methos). Angst. Bad language, and insufficient sex.

Even though the news wasn't unexpected, Methos permitted himself a few moments to grieve. Not enough for the person it was, but they would have understood the need to not waste further time. He closed the web page and opened the travel site to book a flight to Paris.

It was, Methos reflected as he confirmed his reservations, one of the many ironies of the post-fossil fuels era that intercontinental flight had never been easier or faster - or more expensive. Switching to hydrogen, supersonic jetliners had become the norm, and a flight to Paris from Brisbane now took 11 hours, rather than the tedious 21 to 25 it had taken before. It was only for the superrich though, which in itself meant the flights were more comfortable than ever, although the inevitable restrictions of weight meant that even the very wealthy had to go by ship if they wanted to carry more than a small bag. That suited Methos, never a man to travel anything less than light - the only luxury was his sword. Anything else, he could buy in Paris. Or borrow, but he didn't like to count on that.

He considered hiring a car when he arrived, but it was an ostentation too far - private vehicles were rare enough to be highly conspicuous, and at the time of the Gathering, flaunting one's wealth was too clear a signal of Immortality to be done lightly. The flight had been risky enough, but that had been necessary. He needed to see Duncan now -the six weeks a boat trip would take would be too late.

Fortunately, Macleod's mansion was, like much of Paris now, close to a bus route, and Methos walked the short distance to the house, still mulling over his likely reception - a topic which had engaged him all through the flight and ever since. He hadn't seen the Highlander for three years - two years, eight months and three days, to be precise, he thought, and then told himself he really was becoming anal in his old age - and their last words were anything but polite. Lovers for forty-seven years, cohabitants for at least half of that, their relationship had survived the death of Connor MacLeod and the obscenity of Jacob Kells, even Macleod's brief reconciliation and bitter break up with his ex-wife, Kate.

It had survived their mutual grief over the death of Joe Dawson at the age of seventy eight, angry and disillusioned man after the Watchers had gone into meltdown in the space of a single year. It had also survived the chaos as the organisation appeared to become a threat to all Immortals and Methos had watched Macleod agonise over the possibility that he may have to kill mortals to keep the secret of Immortality. At last a compromise was reached with the young Turks who had taken over the Watchers after Joe's retirement, who had forced out the watchers of his generation, and who had, for a time, involved themselves all too actively in the Game. Methos had persuaded Mac, and Joe, that the only way to stop them was to cut off their funds. Mac let as many Immortals as possible know about the Watchers' hitherto secret habit of asset stripping dead Immortals' estates, and once enough of their kind had their properties and wealth tied up in airtight trusts for mortals of their preference, the Watchers simply were unable to function. Joe was instrumental in arranging for the remaining assets of the Watchers to be split up among the existing personnel, in exchange for binding-until-death agreements that the secret of Immortality would not be revealed. And so, the millennia old organisation simply ceased to be. A few keen and historically minded individuals maintained the website which Methos had been accessing with monotonous regularity, watching the gruesome body count increase, but no Immortal had a personal Watcher now. None of those who were left would again have the close friendship with an Immortal that Joe had had with Mac, and with himself.

No, what had killed Mac and Methos' relationship was the Gathering itself. Thank the gods Joe had missed it, Methos thought, not for the first time. It was one thing to know of it as a theoretical possibility, but Methos knew that it would have hurt Joe more than the mortal could have stood, to have watched his old friends be killed one by one. It hurt Methos, and he was used to it. More than the pain of the losses, the lack of honour among the newly active Immortals was a source of anguish for the old ones. MacLeod, Methos knew, had personally killed the first few who took lasers knives, not swords, to their opponents' necks, killing from a safe distance. Hunting in packs was common, so were ambushes. When the Gathering had started three years before, Methos' first instinct was, to his utter surprise, not to run, but to stand by his lover's side. To his further surprise, and shock, Duncan didn't want him there. Their relationship had ended, after an excoriating month of bitter arguments, with Methos flinging himself to other side of the world, to watch, in sadness and in anger, the death toll mount. Every week, he thought to see, prayed not to see, Macleod's name among the dead. And yet, the Scot still prevailed. It could not, Methos knew, last much longer.

He stood in front of the vid to identify himself. It was late, but not too late, and Duncan would hardly be asleep, he knew. Still, it took a very long time before there was a gruff answer to his buzzer. "MacLeod, it's me."

"Go away, Methos." The rudeness surprised the old man. Duncan was usually polite even to his opponents.

"Mac, please, I need to see you."

Without another word, the electronic lock switched to open, and Methos went through the heavy security doors. MacLeod was in the hall. "Methos, you can't be here."

Methos dropped his bag and spread his arms. "Well, I am, and I could do with a drink."

"No. You have to leave, now." The Highlanders looked terrible, and Methos realised that he had been in a fight all too recently - he could practically see sparks of Quickening flickering off his skin.

"Duncan - I know about Amanda."

Mac's shoulder slumped. "She's dead. They're all dead," he said in a dull voice.

"You're not. I'm not."

"And that's why you have to leave, Methos. Please go - if you don't have a hotel, I can suggest one..."

"Mac! Please - goddammit, I lived here longer than you did, I know where the bloody hotels are. I'm not going to one. I'm going to stay here, with an old friend who looks like he's about to fall down. I'm going to pour myself and my old friend some of said friend's best Scotch and then my old friend and I are going to talk. This is not up for debate, Highlander."

A ghost of a smile crossed Duncan's gaunt features. "I'd forgotten how stubborn you are."

"And I'd forgotten how badly behaved _you_ are, youngling. Now step aside. Better still, go have a shower, and I'll get our drinks. Have you eaten?"

Mac shook his head, and then left without further word towards the bathroom. Methos went into the open plan living room cum kitchen, and noted that virtually nothing had changed since he had left. No new ornaments, or books - peering closer, he couldn't even see any new qubes*. In fact, the biggest change was the loss of the vidviewer - it seemed that, like Methos himself, Mac now longer liked to keep up with the news in glorious Technicolor reality. Perhaps he used the Internet, as Methos did.

The man's kitchen was, as ever, a monument to culinary skill, but the cooler was not well-stocked. The freezer was, to Methos' shock - Mac had never been much on frozen food, but here was a chest full of convenience items. When, he wondered, had cooking become a luxury the Scot could no longer indulge in? He pulled out a gunk-covered breast of claimed-to-be-chicken dish, winced at the ingredients, and put it in the microwave. He located the whiskey and poured the two of them a healthy shot, then sipped his as the food cooked. Or recooked - he wasn't sure.

Mac emerged, dressed in sweats, his waist long hair still knotted and uncombed. Unkempt, thought Methos. My beautifully groomed Highland lad is scruffy and unkempt. He got a further shock when MacLeod took the heated food out of the microwave and ate it straight from the packaging, not even putting a plate under it - this, a man who even ate _pizza_ off a china plate, and complained when he could not. "You've eaten?" Mac mumbled around a mouth full of protein.

"On the plane. Your scotch is there." Mac nodded, and took a gulp of it. "You don't think you should sit down to eat?"

Mac started, as if he had been caught out doing something he shouldn't, and then joined Methos at the table. "I'm sorry - I've been living alone for a while."

"So it seems. When did Amanda leave?"

"Of course, you knew she was here. She left two months ago." A year and a half ago, Amanda had written Methos a careful, polite email to tell him that she'd moved in with Mac, and Methos wished her luck. Both of them knew the Highlander needed to have someone in his life, and since he had apparently decided it was not to be Methos, Amanda was the one person Methos would want there. It still hurt though.

"Yes - I thought she wanted the protection."

Mac shook his head. "Got too much for her, living like this ..."

"Living like what, Duncan?"

"You don't know, do you?"

"Well, gee, Mac - I've been living on the other side of the world for three years, at your insistence, I might remind you, and in all that time, you haven't made contact _once._ What did you think was happening? The Watchers were sending me bulletins?" He really had to force himself not to shout - much.

Mac had the grace to look shamefaced. "I'm sorry, Methos. What I meant was that I've been trying to avoid Challenges by staying in the house as much as possible."

"You - avoid Challenges?" If Mac had said he had decided to have a sex change, Methos would have been less shocked.

"I know - doesn't sound like me, does it?" Mac smiled, ruefully.

"And then some. What happened - did you take a bad Quickening?"

"They're all bad, Methos. I hadn't taken a head in a year until tonight. Before that, I couldn't walk out of the house without meeting a Challenge. At first I used to meet every one of them, but it got too much. They were only children, a lot of them."

"So you started to run away?" Methos was having trouble believing this was Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod telling him this. Things must have been appalling.

"You'd have been proud of me." Mac pushed the empty food dish away then stood and fetched something from his coat - a silenced gun. "All of us carry them now - Amanda did, Marcus did, me - there were just too many Quickenings, and the fights were like being taken down by wild dogs." He laid the gun on the table.

"I had no idea," Methos said. "Amanda never told me."

"I asked her not to. She shut herself away for a few months here, but you know what she was like. It got too claustrophobic. She managed to win or avoid fights for a while, but I knew it was inevitable."

"Tonight - her killer?"

"Joseph Fredericks. Just a boy, Methos. Only forty. Such a waste."

"The waste is losing Amanda."

"It's the Gathering. Everyone dies," Mac said heavily. "There can be only one. Methos - that's why you have to leave."

Methos gaped at him. "Is _this_ why you got rid of me, MacLeod? You want the prize? If I'm out of your orbit, then I'll die and you can pick off my killer too?"

The idea clearly horrified MacLeod as much as it did Methos. "No, Methos ... no." Mac sat down again. "But you know you and I cannot kill each other. If we are the only ones left, then the Prize can never be won."

"I don't _care_ , Mac. I don't believe in the Game, never have."

"Amanda _died_ for the Game, Methos! Connor - died for it. Marcus, Gina, Robert - they're all dead because of it. It has to mean something, has to _be_ for something or all this death has been for nothing. Losing you...."

"Was for no reason at all," Methos said bitterly. "Three years, Duncan - three years when I could have been with you, loving you, helping you. And all because of some bloody prize neither of us wants, and which doesn't even exist, most likely."

"But what if it does," Mac said feverishly. "What if the Prize is world peace?'

"What if it's a stuffed toy?" Methos retorted. "Mac - what possible good can come from the deaths of so many people so violently? What prize could be worth that? World peace? For how long? And by whose definition? Russia was at peace for a long time - but look at the way it was achieved. No, I refuse to accept it."

"And I refuse to let you be the one to decide, " Mac said coldly. "Now you've had your drink, so I'm telling you to leave my house."

"No."

"That wasn't a request."

"I know." The two Immortals stared at each other.

"I'll use my gun and dump you in the Seine."

"And I'll just walk back, Duncan."

Mac finally broke eye contact to pick up his dinner mess and dump it in the recycler. Methos walked up behind him. "Besides, you're wrong, Mac. If there can be only one, if this is the Gathering, explain to me how there were not one, but _two_ pre-Immortals on my flight over here."

Mac spun around. "Two? In a hundred people?"

"Yep. And they weren't the first I'd encountered recently."

"But I haven't - no one's reported any here for years," he said. Methos was afraid his former lover was about to faint with shock, so he took his arm and led him back to sit down.

"Think about it, Mac. We don't know how new Immortals come into existence. Maybe the deaths of so many old ones have sparked the new crop."

Mac's reaction was not what Methos had been hoping for. "But that means.... oh God, Methos. It will never be over. The killing..." He looked close to tears.

"No, it is over. How many of us are left, that you know of?"

"Ten. Twenty at the most. The ones who have become recluses like me. All the hunters are dead, just about. Fredericks was the last one, I think."

"Then it's over, Duncan. The Game is over. The new Immortals need never hear about it, need never lift a sword against another. You and I and whoever else is left can tell them that."

"But Amanda..." Mac was actually weeping now. "She died for nothing...."

"I know.." Methos put his hand on Mac's shoulder. "But ultimately, all death is pointless, except that it makes room for others. Perhaps there has to be a Gathering when there are too many of us. I don't know. I don't have the answers, no one does. "

"She was so beautiful, Methos. I loved her."

"I know you did. So did I."

"I miss her. I missed _you_."

Methos took the unshaven face between his hands. "And now you don't need to, not any more. Mac, let me come home. I've been in exile long enough."

"Is that what you thought you were doing?"

"Yes. You think I wanted to live so far away? You sent me away, remember. I commend you on your acting ability, by the way."

Mac grinned through the tears. "I was good, wasn't I? Methos, it was for your protection. I wanted you away from me."

"Yes, well I worked that out eventually. But then when Amanda moved in, I thought you wanted a change of scenery."

"I bored her stupid, you know that? All I did was talk about you."

"Poor Mandy," Methos murmured. "She deserved better than that."

"She did. Methos - will you forgive me?"

"For what?"

"For this," and then pain bloomed in Methos' chest as the bullet caught him high under the collarbone.

"Mac," he gasped.

"Methos, I'm sorry. There can be only one," he heard as he died.

****

Methos revived in the boot of Mac's car, and after spitting up the blood which had pooled in his lungs, he spent a couple of minutes cursing his former lover to the seven pits of hells. He hadn't planned on this possibility - that Macleod had gone stark, staring mad - but he should have done. The Dark Quickening should have taught me something, Methos thought disgustedly. He was tied hand and foot - no, not tied, handcuffed. Resignedly, he went through the tedious process of dislocating his thumbs to free his hands, but had only just succeeded when the quiet purr of the electric motor stopped, as did the vehicle. MacLeod opened the boot, and as Methos feared, the river smell was immediately apparent. Crazed, but no fool, Mac had the gun pointed at him, and was preparing to fire again.

"No, Duncan! Not drowning! Please - you know I'm terrified of the water!" He was only slightly exaggerating the fear he felt, and Mac lowered the gun. "Please - anything but that."

"Get out," Mac said harshly.

"My hands ...."

"Are free. Come on, Methos, you taught me that one. Get out." Methos swung his feet out awkwardly and climbed out of the boot. Mac threw the cuff keys at him and Methos undid his bonds. "You have a choice, Methos. Walk away or I'll bury you so deep that recovering Atlantis will look like a doddle."

"Mac - please. It doesn't have to be this way."

"It has to be exactly this way!" Mac roared, his voice carrying across the wasteland. "Damn you, Methos! Why couldn't you have stayed away? You could have looked at your damn website, and seen when I died. You didn't have to come back and watch!"

"You don't have to die, MacLeod."

"One of us has to - and I don't want it to be you!"

Methos looked at the grief on the Scot's face, and wondered how many times he would get it wrong about this man. "It doesn't have to be either of us. The Prize..."

"Is going to be won, whether you want it or not!" Mac raised his gun.

"I lied!" Methos shouted quickly.

It was enough to short-circuit Mac's overtired brain. "What?"

"I lied. About the Double Quickening. You can kill me."

"Bullshit."

"It's true - Mac, I told you that to stop you getting all worked up about Stephen Keane. If you want the Prize to be won, then let's end it here. You don't want to live in a world without me, and I feel the same. Let it be a fair fight."

Mac shook his head. "I can't, Methos. Not you."

"I Challenge you, Duncan Macleod of the Clan MacLeod."

Mac stiffened. "No, Methos."

"Refusing an honest, honourable Challenge, Macleod?" Methos sneered. "Connor would have been so proud."

"I don't believe you, and I won't fight you. Go back to Brisbane, Methos. Leave me alone."

"I called a Challenge, Mac. If you believe in the Game, if all the deaths are to mean something, then put up." Methos drew his faithful Ivanhoe out of his coat and pointed it towards the Scot. Mac shook his head again and walked away.

"No."

Methos couldn't let him leave. He sprang towards the other man, who had no time to move before he was impaled through a kidney. Macleod sank down to his knees. "Methos," he said in a hurt voice, twisting to lie on his back.

"I'll wait until you heal, Highlander, but then you fight me or I take your head. Do you agree?"

"Methos, please...."

"MacLeod, you were about to consign me to a watery and unpleasant death. Don't trust to my mercy." He let the mask of Death come over his features, and at last, MacLeod seemed to realise he was serious.

"All right."

"Healed yet?"

"Give me a minute."

Methos walked back to the car, and rested his rump on the hood. This better work, old man, he told himself. After a bare minute, Macleod climbed wearily to his feet. "Ready?" Methos asked.

"No. But let's begin."

Methos made the attack and the fight was on in earnest. He could not do what he did the day he first met MacLeod, half a century before - he could not make a poor showing. He fought as hard as he was capable of, fighting fiercely and cunningly to a honourable loss, fighting against MacLeod's natural reluctance to kill him, and working to build the battle rage in his weary and self-loathing opponent. But at last, it was over, and Methos knelt, head bowed, waiting for Mac to strike. I hope I'm right, he prayed. He moved not a muscle as he waited for the katana to begin its downward stroke, but then he heard the clang as it was tossed away. "I can't," Mac sobbed.

"That's what I was counting on, love," Methos said quietly and then surged up, his short sword in his hand, stabbing the Highlander square in the chest. MacLeod looked at him in shock. "See you soon, Duncan," Methos said gently, catching his friend in his arms, and lowering him gently to the ground. He closed the brown eyes as they froze over in death.

***

Unlike the Highlander, Methos was taking no chance with his corpse. He kept the sword right where he'd stuck it. Manoeuvring the big lug was as much of a problem as it had always been - Duncan had lost weight, but not that much, and still outweighed Methos by twenty kilos or so. Fortunately, the house Methos had once called home too, had a private garage, a rarity in Paris even when cars were more common, and now almost never seen, since people had converted them to workshops, bedrooms, flats and other purposes. Mac had never been able to detach himself from his cars, and Methos reflected that they were slightly more of a necessity for Immortals. Carrying bodies around tended to be a real pain on the commuter buses.

He dragged the dead weight inside the house, and dumped the body on the floor. He took the time to clean up and change into some of Duncan's clothes, before connected Duncan's computer to the Net, and getting the information he needed. He spent the next three hours making phone calls, after which time it was two am and he needed to sleep. He thought about reviving the Scot, and then thought he would be a much better frame of mind after a decent night's rest. Besides - he owed the bastard for the threat to throw him in the river. He _hated_ drowning.

****

Even jet lag didn't keep him awake, and he slept soundly for six hours until he woke, disorientated, in a room that was once very familiar to him indeed. He lay for a moment or two, savouring the feel of the comfortable bed they had chosen together, and wondered if he and Mac would share it again any time soon. A lot would depend on how the next few hours went, he thought. He got dressed and made himself coffee - the only bread in the house was frozen. Now he looked closely, he could see that the food was mostly supplied by a home delivery company, and he shook his head over the horror of the Gathering which had driven the most courageous and gregarious of them all to live like a hermit. He wasn't the only one, as Methos' late night calls had confirmed. It stops now, Methos swore.

Finally, as ready as he ever would be, he fetched a towel from the bathroom, and pulled the sword out of Duncan, placed the cloth on his chest to catch the inevitable vomited blood. Reviving always seemed to be easier for MacLeod, Methos thought. It hurt less. Took less time. He had no idea why. The baleful glare he got from the brown eyes was nothing to do with the pain of resuscitation, he knew. "Surprise. You're not dead," he said sardonically.

Mac tossed the bloodstained towel away. "You knew I couldn't kill you," he said bitterly.

"Yes."

"Because of the shared Quickening."

"Perhaps. Or because you love me."

"I'm beginning to reconsider that," Mac said peevishly, hauling himself upright.

"You do that, Highlander. There's coffee in the pot. If you're looking for your guns, they're in the river. _All_ of them, Duncan," smiling to himself at the crestfallen look. "Yes, even that one," he said as Duncan looked at the kitchen. "I taught you all you know, did you forget that?"

Mac stumbled to the counter and poured a coffee before staring blearily at Methos. "Nothing's changed, Methos. The Prize is still to be won."

"On the contrary, MacLeod. Everything's changed, and the Prize, as I see it, has already been won. By you. By me, and the 12 Immortals I called last night. No more killing, Mac. No more Game. Everything you and I have ever hoped for."

"You're crazy, Methos."

"Pot and fucking kettle, MacLeod, pot and fucking kettle." He crossed over to Mac's desk, picked up the notepad and threw it at the Scot, who barely managed to catch it. "There are the names of every Immortal still alive and known by the Watchers. I called each of them last night. None of them - not one single one, Mac - has any interest in the Game, or fighting. They are all agreed on that, and they also agree that if you or I turn up without warning bearing a sword at any time in the future, they will shoot us and kill us while we're down. Barring that - we and they have no quarrel. You can call them yourself to confirm it."

"And you trust them?"

"Yes, I do. These are people who have done what I did two hundred and fifty years ago. They've kept themselves out of the Game, and before that, have only fought to defend themselves. You have the Chronicles Joe left you, you check it out. It's over, Mac. The Prize is peace. Peace for us, peace for the new Immortals about to come into existence, and for all those in the future. " Mac wouldn't look at him. "Duncan," Methos said, putting his hand on his friend's shoulder. "Amanda and the others didn't die for nothing. It had to get to this point before the killing ended. Don't make her death a mockery."

"What if you're wrong, Methos?" Mac said, his brown eyes liquid in their confusion and sorrow.

"I'm not wrong. Trust me, Duncan. Trust the world's oldest survivor - the man who will not, cannot, ever kill you."

"Because of the Quickening."

"No. Because I love you more than life itself. Because I would spare you pain and grief, and because I want to share a long and happy life with you. I am sick of death, sick of the killing. We all are, love. Please - give us the Prize."

"I was always told 'there can be only one'."

Methos could tell by his harsh breathing that Mac was fighting tears. "Yes. We were all told that. It's wrong. Duncan - a hundred years ago, Russia was the enemy of America, South Africans were either white or nonwhites, and gays were an abomination before the Lord. People were told those truths at their mothers' knees. Did that make them right?"

"No," Mac breathed out, his voice catching. "Methos, I missed you. Every single, long, miserable day. I thought I was doing the right thing."

Methos put arms around his friend. "And I missed you. I never stopped missing you, and worrying about you. Now, can I stay? Or will you shoot me again?"

"No," Mac said again, laughing and crying in the single word. "Please stay. Stay all the days of my life, Methos."

"Can I borrow your clothes again?"

"No, old man, that's going too far." Methos pouted, but the Highlander forestalled his complaint. "I mean - because I intend to keep you bare nekkid for the next century and I dare say fashions will have changed by then."

"Duncan - you'll have to catch me first," Methos said, dancing away, laughing.

****

MacLeod grabbed Methos easily, as the old man intended, but as he was pulled close, Methos sniffed. "I think we forgot about something."

Mac looked down at the blood on his shirt. "Your fault."

"Maybe so, but if you think I'm going to bed with you in this condition, you're wrong."

"You just want to share a bath with me."

Methos grinned. "No, something else."

"I know," Mac said resignedly. "You want to wash my bloody hair. God, Methos, you are such a fetishist."

"Hey, I resemble that remark! And anyway, I've had to go cold turkey for three years - cut me some slack, will you?" He pulled out a lock of hair which was snarled and full of dirt from the waste ground Mac had been dragged over while dead. "I think you'll agree it needs it."

"All right, you win. But we can't make a habit of it - water restrictions, you know."

"Mac - I've been living in Australia. What I don't know about water shortages wouldn't cover a thumbnail." Methos led the way into the bathroom and ran the water. "Besides, we only use the same as we do if we shower together."

Mac began to strip. "How was Brisbane?" he asked.

Methos noted with dismay the leanness of his lover's body which lacked the fine definition that it once had. Mac had just lost weight, not shifted it around with training. "Oh, hot. Xenophobic, but you'd expect that."

"The invasion still rankles, huh?"

"Well, yeah. But I think they're getting used to having Southern Indonesia up north. So far there's been no conflict as far south as Brisbane, and I did hear people talking about the trade possibilities. The uni's nice. Nice Antiquities department, run by a few genuine fossils. I don't think there was a single real Aussie in the place - all ex-pat Brits, and a couple of Yanks. I fitted right in."

Methos was methodically removing his clothes as he spoke, and Mac took the last items out of his hands before pulling him close. "And drove the little undergraduates mad with lust, I bet."

"You know, it's the strangest thing - the Aussie boys are gorgeous, but being exotic beats looks every time."

Mac kissed his nose. "And when you're exotic _and_ good-looking..."

"I still think you need glasses, MacLeod. " Methos stepped into the bath and held his hand out to Mac. "In you get, pup."

Mac snorted with annoyance at the nickname, but let himself be urged to sit down. Methos immediately wrapped his arms around Mac's body. "Oh gods, I've missed this," he sighed, nuzzling again Mac's neck.

"You don't seem mad at me, Methos. You have every right to be," Mac said in a subdued voice.

"So what? What would it achieve? I know why you did it, and now I'm back." And I don't want waste any more time being angry and hurt, he said to himself.

"I'm not that good an actor, Methos. Why did you go?"

Mac twisted so he could look at Methos, who laughed. "Jesus, Duncan. You forget how insistent you were - okay, I didn't believe you had suddenly decided we weren't right together any more, but I felt if you wanted me to leave that badly, you had good reason. I figured I'd go, you'd calm down, I'd come back. But you never contacted me, and the next thing I knew, Amanda was here, so I guessed you'd said what you really meant."

"You know different now?"

"Yes, I do. You and I need to sit down and do some serious talking about you making decisions like that for me, but not today. Today is just you and me."

"And the end of the Gathering," Mac said in a dull voice.

Methos smacked him lightly on the head. "Mac - it's happened. I know it feels strange, but remember what it was like in 1945, when the war was over? Everyone felt lost, bereft of purpose, but only for a while. Life has this big old habit of rolling right along. Give yourself some time."

"Connor would never have accepted it."

"No. That doesn't make it wrong, Duncan." He rinsed through Mac's hair with water, then applied shampoo, working it slowly and carefully through to the ends. His lover groaned.

"Ah, Methos, God - no one does that like you."

"Not even Amanda?"

"She said I should cut it off."

"Bloody woman. I miss the little vixen but if she was here now with a pair of scissors, I'd apply them to a part of her anatomy she wouldn't have appreciated."

Mac was silent, and Methos knew he was thinking of his long time friend and lover. He continued the shampoo in silence, rinsing and washing twice, before getting clean water and swirling it through. "Have you got that stuff?"

Mac handed him the wildly expensive conditioner they had located which tamed his hair and allowed the many knots it tended to accumulate to be easily removed. Methos massaged it in thoroughly. "Mac?" he said after a while, when the silence had gone on for a long time.

"So many deaths, Methos. And yet when that fake Methos turned up, we all made fun of his message. _You_ made fun of it, " he added accusingly.

"Because he was wrong, Mac. 'Cometh the man, cometh the hour'. Well, he wasn't the man, and it wasn't the hour. He was only reaching the most vulnerable, not the ones who could actually stop the Game."

"I could have done what you did last night," Mac said in a low voice. "Amanda would have still been alive."

"Maybe," Methos answered honestly. "But Mac, don't beat yourself up. You've survived all your long life by fighting. I've survived by not fighting. Answers that seem right to me, wouldn't occur to you necessarily."

"What if you're wrong, Methos?"

Methos shook him by the shoulder, then kissed it. "I'm not. We can rise above the biological imperative. We are not animals. Fight it, Duncan. Fight the urge to fight. You did it before with Ahriman, you can do it this time."

The Scot fell silent again, and Methos concentrated on getting the conditioner out of the man's hair, rinsing it clear. "We're done here, Mac." MacLeod levered himself out of the bath and snagged a towel for Methos, and another for himself. Methos thought his lover still looked subdued, but it was not surprising, given the shock and the grief of the past few days, even months. "Hey," Methos said gently, holding Mac under the chin, "I know I'm no great catch, but you might look a little happier at me being back."

He was seized in a crushing embrace. "Oh, Methos, Methos, I am happy, really. I love you, and I've missed you. I just have this horrible feeling the sky's about to fall on my head."

"And here ve are haffing Chicken Little of the Clan McLittle," Methos said in a fake German accent. "Just trust me, Mac. Have I ever let you down?"

He was a little insulted by the way Mac carefully considered the question, but the insult was erased by the serious way Mac said, "No. You have not. You are the one constant I can trust, my lodestone." Mac trapped his face and kissed him deeply. "Welcome home, love."

"Welcome back, Duncan." Methos tugged the wet hair. "Hairdryer."

The solar banks were up and running at full tilt, so running the appliance was no drag on the household supply. Mac preferred to let his long locks dry naturally, but Methos had plans which did not include rolling about on damp hair. He sat MacLeod down in the bedroom - their bedroom, he thought - at the window. The sun blazed down from a clear sky, much cleaner than the Paris in which he and Mac had fallen in love. But then it rained more often so it tended to counteract the benefits of the lower pollution. He fell into the trancelike state he usually indulged in when combing Mac's hair, letting the blasts of warm air from the stand dryer do their work. "Methos?"

"Huh?"

"I swear, I'm buying you a cat, "Mac said dryly.

"Oh please don't, I don't like competition."

"Then stop drooling over my hair and come and sit next to me."

"People would pay good money for me to drool on their hair, I'll have you know. There was this one woman ...."

"Shut up, Methos," Mac said kindly, "you're babbling." He tugged Methos down beside him onto the window seat. "Hello, old man," he said, kissing him. "Did you miss me or my hair?"

"Oh, the hair, honest. You'd never have heard from me again if you'd let me make that wig out of it.... ooph," he said, as over 80 kilos of Highlander suddenly positioned themselves down over him. "Of course, I retain a certain amount of sentimental attachment to your chest."

"My chest?" Mac propped himself up with his elbows on either side of his lover.

"Mmmm, your chest, your nipples, your big brown eyes, your cute butt ...."

"I notice an important, not to mention, highly significant omission from the list, Methos."

"I was getting to that, you priapic peasant."

"Getting a better line in insults, I see."

"You like that one? It's all my own work. My colleagues tended to be a bit more earthy than that - the number of words for penises, vomiting and other bodily functions did have me worried."

Mac reached down and wrapped his hand around Methos' cock. "And for what I'm about to do to you, they had words for that?"

"Oh lots and lots .... oooh, Mac."

"Now that's my kind of word," MacLeod said, applying himself.

*****

"We need a new mattress," Methos announced, afterwards.

"What's wrong with this one?" Mac asked lazily, rubbing his hand on Methos' stomach.

"Nothing - yet. But in a week, I predict it will be a shadow of its former self if you keep this up."

"Hmmm, what makes you think I'll want to make love like that every day?"

"Because I am very old and wise, MacLeod." He parked himself on top of the Scot's chest. "And because you love me insanely, and because you worship my body, and...."

"And you _still_ talk too much in bed. Next time I send you away..."

" _Next_ time?" Methos asked, in a dangerous voice.

Mac ignored him. "... It will be somewhere like Iceland, where silence is prized."

"Silence is only a prize if people have better things to do with their mouths ... oh. Do I sense method in your madness?"

Mac struck a dramatic pose, his hand on his forehead. "Finally - after fifty years, the old man gets it!" Methos smacked him. The late morning sun filled the room with light, and danced on the golden skin of the Highlander. Methos traced the patterns the shadows of the little hairs made. "Methos?"

"Yes, oh noble Highlander?"

"What do you think the Prize really is?"

"Don't know. I don't believe it exists. It can't be worth it, whatever it is. I would rather have Amanda back than any prize."

"Yes." The brown eyes clouded.

"Mac, don't brood."

"I'm not. But she was lovely, Methos."

"That she was. A darling girl."

Mac closed his eyes, and Methos stroked his face slowly until he heard his breathing deepen. He had told Mac the truth. The prize was likely a myth, a deadly, pointless myth which had led to the deaths of too many good people. But there was another truth he had not said, one personal to him. He had come back to MacLeod, and stopped the game, and he had had all the reward he could want. Love was the Prize he had won and it was sweet indeed.

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written nearly twenty years ago under another pseudonym. It hasn't been revised (or reread by me) since then.
> 
> I am posting this and my other stories from this period purely so people can read them if they choose. I won't be reading comments, and don't care if you leave kudos. I'm dumping them and running.
> 
> Having said that, I worked hard on them, and I hope they still entertain someone out there.


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